Apr 29, 2009

For this activity we used old cardboard boxes (sturdyish ones like wine boxes or diaper boxes), some largish nails that we had left over from making batteries out of lemons and potatos (I'll get around to posting about that one day), some old wood screws (the nails and screws were put in the yoghurt pots, so every kid had his or her own stash). screwdrivers (phillips) and instead of hammers, because a)we only had one and b)it was bloody heavy, we used rocks from the garden for hammering. By the way, yes, everything is covered in dried sidewalk chalk from earlier play(the rocks, the floor and even the outside walls in a later picture, not to worry though, it hoses off) I marked a load of dots in the tops of the boxes and the kids used the rocks to hammer the nails in on the dots, then they pulled the nails out and used the holes as a guide to start screwing the wood screws in. Both my girls have used screwdrivers a lot recently with different projects and the lads loved this activity too. They all got the clockwise to screw in and anticlockwise to screw out thing by the end.

They stuck at this with minimal interference from me for what must have been approaching two hours. My job seemed to be merely fetching more nails and screws. They were so into it that we ran out of screws and I had to resort to giving them a box of white plastic coated hooks that had screw ends to keep going with.

As usual, the combination of being allowed to play with two things that they usually aren't (rocks and nails) meant that this was a very popular activity. I think they inadvertently got a lot of skills from this though and it was free because we had all the stuff lurking in the garage. Yay free! I'm just going to pile the boxes in the garage and if they ask to do it again tomorrow or next week then I'll turn the boxes upside down and give them some smaller screws and nails and see how they do with something a little more fiddly. Mwah ha ha!

Congrats on being Blog of the Week at Make and Takes! I really like this idea of using cardboard boxes as...er... cardboard boxes for a change. But the whole newly-sanctioning-a-previously-banned-thing is genius. Nothing like that to get the kids to stay really long at an activity.

I just found your blog (from a comment you made on another blog) and I think you're genius. My kids would LOVE these things. I just have one question and it sounds terrible, but how do you get the patience to do these things? I always thought I'd be the kind of mom who did this kind of stuff with her kids, but I lack the patience...

Craftwithme, honestly, there's less whining and squabbling with my crew if I have things like this going on. They are so full of curiosity that if I can manage to direct some of it towards an activity of some sort (ideally one with some kind of learning potencial) then I'm less likely to pull all my hair out, bury them up to their necks in the back yard and eat a whole jar of Nutella without a spoon.

I have a background in science and design, so making stuff and finding ways for them to figure out how things work is nerdily fun for me too ;)

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The man that I am affiliated with also has a blog. He loves to make stuff with and for our kids as well. His domain is more in the realms of electronics, but he makes other stuff too. Check out his electronic fangling over at Fangletronics.